Clint Bowyer’s timing was one week off.
A week before Bowyer makes a return trip to his home state of Kansas, he had one of his best weekends as a NASCAR driver.
The Emporia native began the weekend with a victory in Saturday’s Busch Series Dover 200 and followed that with an eighth-place finish in the Nextel Cup Dover 400 on Sunday, setting up a return to Kansas riding on a high.
“The win is a momentum-builder,” Bowyer said by phone Sunday night. “It was pretty good timing, but we had been snake-bit so many times, and we finally got a win.”
In a race sullied by 13 cautions, Bowyer managed to weave through the wreckage Saturday at Dover International Speedway to win the Dover 200.
It was Bowyer’s first Busch Series victory of the year after finishing second in four races this season.
“It was unbelievable how many people (Sunday) around the garage were saying ‘finally,’” Bowyer said. “We’ve just been so close so many times this year and had really fast cars, but we couldn’t seem to get the win. To finally get a win was important for us.”
The race at Dover was completed only after accident after accident delayed the race. In all, a track-record 46 laps were run under caution.
Bowyer took control of the race with two laps left after race leader Martin Truex Jr. spun out for the race’s final caution, which forced an extra two laps. Bowyer took advantage on the restart and pulled away from Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth to take the green-white-checkered flag, finishing .547 seconds ahead of Kenseth.
“It was a lot of fun getting to race against those guys. They were in a dogfight up there, and I was happy just watching them,” Bowyer said. “I started catching them and getting in the middle of it, and I thought for a minute there would be five of us wrecked in a big pile of smoke, but things worked out.”
After starting the race in 16th, Bowyer came back to win his his third Busch Series race of his career and the first since last October at Memphis.
Bowyer’s victory came after a shaky start to the weekend that caused him to have doubts about his chances.
“Starting the weekend out, in practice, the car was just absolutely terrible. I wasn’t happy with it,” Bowyer said. “We struggled trying to get a handle on it. I would have never bet in a million years that we were going to win that race. I thought after both practice sessions, if I had a chance at all, it was going to be in the (Nextel) Cup car. We had a really strong Cup car in practice.”
Bowyer’s prediction of a strong Nextel Cup race turned out to ring true, as he rounded out his weekend with an eighth-place finish in Sunday’s Dover 400. Bowyer ran in second for a good portion of the race before fading to eighth after breaking a valve spring in his car’s motor, which caused it to lose a cylinder. Bowyer’s Richard Childress Racing teammate Jeff Burton took the checkered flag.
“We blew up there at the end,” Bowyer said. “We fell back quite a bit and kind of blew our chances of winning, but our teammate won, so that’s pretty cool.”
Bowyer’s big weekend sets up a return to Kansas to race in Saturday’s Busch Series Yellow Transportation 300 and Sunday’s Nextel Cup Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway.
“This is a special track for me, coming back to Kansas in front of a lot of family and friends,” Bowyer said. “It will be important for me to run well. We’re going to be hitting on all eight cylinders and hopefully we can get it on.”